Passion, Romance and Happily-Ever-After

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The February Update

As you know, I’ve come back to writing and publishing after a hiatus. I miss writing and I still have so many stories that I want to tell. I’m making some changes this time around, so will do a monthly update here on the blog to keep you in the loop on my progress. This month’s post is a bit long.

My motto for this month is: You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.

• I’m back at my day job, and have been for a while. This has both its perks and its drawbacks. On the upside, there’s that pay check, and I do like my job. On the other hand, I have less time for writing and publishing my books, and publishing takes an enormous amount of time. I’m hoping to get more efficient and actually, the heavy lifting is done now that all the backlist is available again.

• I have repackaged and republished my backlist now (phew) so that job is done. It was a good reminder of the dangers of rabbit-holes and time-sinks in this business. I wasn’t happy with the options for cover designers for new covers for The Phoenix, but I had a very firm idea of what I wanted. I decided to do the covers myself (!) which meant I had to acquire some design software and learn how to use it. In the end, it all worked out, but took much longer than anticipated – and I have another skill to add to my resume. 🙂

• I have a new newsletter sign-up. Yay! As before, I’ll only send a newsletter when I have a new release (and republishing new editions of older titles doesn’t count). Since the existing list was a few years old, it seemed to make more sense to just start over again. (I actually did this in 2018, but am counting it as an accomplishment now anyway.) You can sign up right here.

• The Plume and The Wedding are currently enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. Interestingly enough, some things haven’t changed—that strategy isn’t working particularly well for me this time, just as it didn’t in the past. LOL! So, those books will be coming out of that program later this month and going into wide distribution again.

• I’m now using a service called Books2Read Universal Links. I like that it provides a link to many portals without me having to include all of them on my website. Also, Amazon is becoming particular about consumers shopping from the regional store that serves their territory, if there is one. So, if you’re in Canada and follow the Amazon.com link, you might be told that my book isn’t available to you. That’s nonsense, but the links don’t re-direct to Amazon.ca based on the location of your ISP. I’m sure Amazon will work this out, but for the moment, if you need a different Amazon store than the US one, you can find it through this link. Books2Read also supports a lot of other international portals, which is cool. You can see my author landing page on B2R right here (and you can get to it by clicking any of the individual B2R book links, then clicking on the book cover, then on my name.)

• I’m not going to fuss with social media this time because I want to write as much as I can. You can follow me at Amazon or BookBub to get notifications of new releases, although I’m not sure how consistent they are in doing that. You can also follow this blog or sign up for my newsletter above.

• Similarly, I’m not going to worry about print editions right now. If you really want a print edition of a certain title, please let me know in the comments. Some of the print editions have made the transition from Createspace to Amazon KDP and are thus available on Amazon. I know that doesn’t work in all territories and that some of you don’t like shopping at Amazon, so let me know what you need or want and I’ll try to work it out.

What’s next?

• I’ve put Euphoria aside for the moment, since very few of you seem to be interested in that series. I’d originally planned for five fairy-tale-retellings in that world and have the covers already so may come back to it in future.

• The Phoenix was supposed to have three more books to complete that series: I’m going to write Marked (Book 7) next and see if I can wrap it up in that one volume or not. I’ll know more when that book gets closer to completion.

• The New Project. One of the reasons for my hiatus was that I had a character show up and start talking to me. Her story was in first-person POV and I wasn’t sure what the heck it was. I didn’t know how it fit into my brand and whether it would meet your expectations. I was thinking it might be a reverse-harem story, but now I suspect it’s a journey, with similarities to Joanna’s journey in The Plume, as well as a story in which two wounded souls heal each other. (I like those kinds of stories.) Because it will be serialized (and long), I’m going to write the whole thing before I start publishing, but I’ll keep you updated on my progress. The bonus of this is that this story ties into the world of The Plume and The Phoenix—yes, we will see more of Rex—which means I have a better idea of how The Phoenix series needs to end. In fact, the hero of this new project will appear in Marked.

So, that’s the plan! I’m excited about the possibilities and am glad to see you here.

Drop by on March 15 for another update on my progress and in the meantime, happy reading!